


What's Better Than a Bouquet?

by danceswithhamsters01



Series: Reddit Prompts [61]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F, Flowers, Gardens & Gardening, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 15:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19814737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithhamsters01/pseuds/danceswithhamsters01
Summary: Based on a prompt from r/dragonage.Prompt 3: Choose one or the other of the listed below and form a prompt from it: Emotions: Dizzying Happiness or Smug Satisfaction, Colors: Deep Dark Red, or Ice Blue, and one of these two senses: Sight, or Smell. Bonus Challenge Try to write this in only 500 words.[Deep Dark Red, Smell, Dizzying Happiness]Mara Hawke gets an idea for a gift for her sweetheart, Merrill.





	What's Better Than a Bouquet?

Mara pushed herself up from the kneeling position she’d been stuck in for the better part of an hour and brushed the soil from her trousers. Her lips curved into a broad grin after taking a deep appreciative sniff. Freshly tilled soil, water, and the gentle aroma of various flowers perfumed the air. A spade, a shovel, and a watering can stood off to the side, silent witnesses to the work the elder Hawke sibling had been chipping away at for most of a month.

 _Merrill is going to love this,_ she thought happily.

She grew giddy at thoughts of what her lover’s reaction would be to the gift. It had been sheer luck that she’d overheard Varric’s complaining about the Dalish woman’s penchant for wandering into nobles’ gardens and picking flowers and the money he spent soothing ruffled feathers. That had sparked an idea in the head of “Lady Hawke-Amell of Kirkwall.” The courtyard of the family estate had become neglected and unkempt during in the years since her uncle had been forced to vacate and sign over ownership of the place to pay off family debts. Bit by bit, the mage cleared out the overgrowth and hauled away the debris of dead or dying shrubs and trees. Once that had been accomplished, it left the earth bare and ready for something new.

One side of the new courtyard garden erupted in various wildflowers native to the area. She’d taken the liberty of collecting cuttings and seeds while she and her companions wandered near Sundermount and the Wounded Coast. Daisy-like flowers with yellow-orange centers exploded in a rainbow of reds, pinks, yellows, and whites. In the back, freshly transplanted ornamental shrubs that were supposed to erupt in a burst of red-orange blooms, or so the merchants had promised Hawke, sat patiently waiting for summer and their turn to bloom. On the opposite side, a mix of pretty flowers that made their home in the Marches and Orlais sat together, mixed haphazardly. A cluster of lavenders sat next to a gaggle of petunias in a jumble of varying colors. Further down from that, a patch of asters sat between ground-hugging phlox whose blooms drew the eye with their deep pink coloring and a gang of zinnias in a spectrum that ran from pale pink whispers to blood red. Behind them stood hollyhocks that were steadily creeping skyward as the days went by.

In the very center of the courtyard, holding a place of honor, if such a thing could be said of a plant, sat a regal rose bush. Its buds were just beginning to unfold, revealing deep dark red petals. Mara walked up to the plant and sighed wistfully. It was the same exact shade of red as the rose bush Mother loved so much back at their cottage in Lothering. She sang to the thing every morning while watering it and the garden. Father had planted it there for Mother. After Father died, she’d sometimes over-hear Mother talking to the plant as if it could somehow convey her words to him.

 _Now my love will have a rose bush –-no, an entire flower garden!-- of her own,_ she beamed silently.

The sound of a distant door shutting and a soft lilting voice calling out “Hawke?” made the mage check her clothes one last time for any dirt before scurrying off to bring the elven woman to see her new gift.


End file.
